Resizing system partition in Vista disabled

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RedShark

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 8, 2003
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After testing Vista 64-bit for a day, I decided to stick with it. I deleted my 32-bit XP partition, reconfigured the Vista boot manager, and am left with the disk configuration shown here:

Vista.png


My question is: is it possible to resize the main Vista partition (C:\) to use up the extra space at the beginning of the drive? Does Vista Disk Management only allow me to resize the partition "upwards" -- that is, to the "right" in the image? Any workarounds? I was hoping to avoid 3rd party partition management software if possible, but it appears that's the only alternative. What are some good choices for 64-bit Vista? I could always just create a new partition to fill the space, but was also hoping to avoid that :) Thanks for any insight!
 
I wish Partition Magic worked in Vista. It would have made life a lot easier for me when I set up Vista.
 
Yeah, I used to use PartitionMagic all the time. Symantec seems to have bought the company and then let the product die. An odd business decision, to be sure.
 
GParted is free, better than Partition Magic, and works just fine with Vista.

Be aware that there may be some issues when mucking around with your partitions... I recently re-sized my Vista partition and had a hell of a time getting things working again... It seems that Vista detects this as some sort of Hardware change and is hesitant to boot... now of course I shrunk my partition and added a second in ext3... and I think that may have been the problem.. I'm not sure if expanding your partition will cause any issues or not... but regardless GParted will do what you want.... for free.
 
Great, thanks for the link. I think I've heard of this tool before, but didn't think of it. I'll probably try it sometime soon (can't right now because I'm trying to get some work done :)).

Do you think the Vista "repair" option would be able to correct the problem if the machine refused to boot? When I deleted the XP partition, I discovered, to my dismay, that Vista was using it to store the boot manager. To fix it, I just booted from the Vista DVD, told it to "repair" any problems that would cause the system not to boot, and it fixed it immediately.
 
I was personally unable to boot from the Vista DVD.... frustrated, I threw in my XP cd and selected to save the existing Vista partition, booted my Vista DVD and finally was able to perform a repair install.

Hope that helps.
 
Powerquest was a great company with fine products, and then Symantec walked in. Funny thing about that: Microsoft buys up companies all the time, but rarely do they ever ruin the company they absorb, they usually tend to make it better, improve the products they made/make, and the people get some money in the process.

Symantec... man, they have so totally ruined Peter Norton's good name over the years... bleh

Acronis Disk Director is the tool I recommend personally if you're wanting something like Partition Magic. PM is stuck at version 8.05 and hasn't been updated in over 3 years; it's doubtful that Symantec will ever do anything with PM again, hence me never recommending it for anything anymore, even old Win2K boxes. I simply won't tell people to use it, for any reason.

GParted is free, and works, but the layout is a bit tricky for some people and they end up wiping everything clean and having shitfits in the process, and then people like me end up fixing it. Just a fact of life, GParted isn't to blame there. But Disk Director looks, feels, and works exactly like a standard Windows application so people can use it with minimal muss or fuss.

Good luck, regardless...
 
digital_exhaust said:
GParted is free, better than Partition Magic, and works just fine with Vista.
Click to expand...

It may be free, but it's also been slow as ass on almost every chipset I've tried it on. Simple resize operation take several hours to complete. It's really annoying...

...although hey, it's free *shrug*
 
Blue Falcon said:
It may be free, but it's also been slow as ass on almost every chipset I've tried it on. Simple resize operation take several hours to complete. It's really annoying...

...although hey, it's free *shrug*
Click to expand...

I haven't had that sort of problem with it.... I recently re-sized an 80g partition to 300g and it took less than 30 minutes...
I know a lot of people have had problems with GParted, I haven't and therefore will continue to recommend it as a free alternative to faster and more feature rich paid for applications such as Acronis, which is better yes, but for one time (or every time, in my case) use, GParted is a good way to go, as long as you take your time and learn how to use it.....
 
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